Italy: Flora Trade Show attracted 4,793 visitors
Rimini Fiera chairman Lorenzo Cagnoni comments, “Flora Trade features a dynamic innovative B2B format, with a strong accent on the sector’s requirements: international business meetings, specialist training, a modern functional expo centre at the service of companies and visitors and institutional meetings that made Flora Trade Show an important opportunity for insights and networking for the entire nursery/floriculture sector. We laid good foundations, so that, through time, this first appointment becomes the trade’s key event, able to re-launch the leadership of Italy’s floriculture and nursery sector worldwide.”
Rimini Fiera Business Unit manager Patrizia Cecchi announces, “The companies taking part confirmed their appreciation of a model that targeted business decisively, enabling them to set up important relations with foreign buyers. There was all-round appreciation for the beautiful halls and efficient services, which made doing business more pleasant and easier, along with the area’s proverbial hospitality.”
The event was characterized by its high international vocation, thanks to the participation of buyers from the most interesting countries connected with the sector, such as Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Belgium and Croatia. Over 600 business meetings were held, which the foreign trade members had scheduled before the expo, by means of Rimini Fiera’s digital platform.
At Flora Trade, right from day one - after the joint inauguration, with the participation of Andrea Olivero, Deputy minister for Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies, Rimini Fiera Chairman Lorenzo Cagnoni, the chairman of Cesena Fiera, Renzo Piraccini, Rimini’s mayor, Andrea Gnassi, Cesena’s mayor, Paolo Lucchi and Paolo De Castro (Member of the European Parliament) - numerous events were dedicated to the trade’s professionals: starting with the opening conference on the topic of protection of the environment and landscape, with the participation of Confagricoltura, CIA and ANVE, followed by the international workshop “New Gardens for the City Life” dedicated to landscape designers and agronomists, and more technical conferences specifically held for producer companies, through to events dedicated to garden centres and florists.
Simultaneously with Flora Trade, Macfrut, the Italian fruit and vegetable expo that at this edition set a record as far as quantity, quality and professionalism was concerned (one exhibitor out of five was from abroad).
There was a successful first edition of the Flora Trade Decoration Cup, the floral decoration competition involving the major national florist schools (Assofioristi, Pianeta Fiore, Laboratorio Idee, Scultura Fiori and Le Mani Parlano) with the collaboration of the Associazione Nazionale Piante e Fiori d’Italia and Guida I Fioristi Italiani.
For Flora Trade Show Rimini Fiera featured an expo area of approximately 10,000 square metres, with approximately a hundred companies (in addition to the 33,000 square metres dedicates to the simultaneously held MacFrut), an entire hall hosted Giardino all'Italiana (Italian-style gardens), thanks to the extremely appreciated collaboration of Grassi Design Studio, thus enabling the creation of a brand new expo format, that brought together companies, products, landscapes and buyers and was based on winning ideas, such as the natural playground and the ceramic park.
The numerous proposals for personalizing flowerbeds and greenery included outstanding ones such as original designs exploiting the colour of gravel, sand, herbs and earth, 50 year-old Bougainvilleas, small to medium sized tropical plants, shaped like trees or left to grow freely; then Mag Bonsai, cacti, very spectacular bushes, chosen precisely to decorate outdoor areas and, lastly, careful smooth finishes and imaginative sinuous lines for Kidfriendly equipment with a green vocation.
An ultra-innovative technique that astonished professionals attending was also presented at Flora Trade Show: this was NEMO’S GARDEN, the world’s first experiment of a underwater vegetable garden at a depth of up to 12 metres, a project for underwater cultivation of land vegetables intended for human consumption, realized by means of the installation of underwater structures specially designed by the R&D section of the Ocean Reef Group.
Flora Trade Show was chosen not only by important individual companies such as Pagano Piante, Cantatore Michele, Floramiata and more, and major floriculture production groups (companies of the Distretto Florovivaistico Alto Lombardo, Flormercati, Flor-Coop Lago Maggiore, Florbusiness, Florveneto and the Distretto Vivaistico PlantaRegina), who chose the expo as the perfect avant-garde showcase for presenting their products, but also by large foreign groups such as that of Kenya’s flower growers, and Dutch companies, represented by TecnOlanda and Barendsen.
Moreover, Italy’s major regional excellencies came together precisely at Rimini Fiera, starting with Apulia, a key area for Mediterranean flower cultivation, which, with the Distretto Florovivaistico Pugliese, brought an important debate to Flora Trade Show on Xylella fastidiosa, a disease that is hitting olive trees and for which Apulia is in a leader in its control and treatment.
However, the expo was not only floriculture and agronomy, it also featured landscape and flowers, with the participation of teachers from the major floral decoration schools (with Chicco Pastorino, Cecilia Serafino, Carmelo Antonuccio and Peppe Picca), AICG member garden centres, landscape designers and internationally famous architects who took part in Wednesday’s international workshop “New Gardens for the City Life”- From gardens to landscape – promoted by PAYSAGE, during which international experts faced various aspects to garden and landscape design.
The appointment with the second edition of Flora Trade Show is in September 2016.
For more information
Flora Trade Show
www.floratrade.it